Chip comparison
Cerebras WSE-3 (Wafer-Scale Engine 3) vs SambaNova SN40L
Side-by-side specs
Straight from each vendor's datasheet. Winner in bold: higher throughput, memory, or transistor count; lower power draw or price. Sparse (2:4) throughput roughly doubles the FP8/INT8 numbers shown.
| Field | Cerebras WSE-3 (Wafer-Scale Engine 3) | SambaNova SN40L |
|---|---|---|
| Process node | TSMC N5 | TSMC N5 |
| Transistors (B) | 4000 | — |
| Die size | 46225 mm² | — |
| TDP | 23000 W | 700 W |
| Memory | 44 GB on-die SRAM | 1500 GB DDR5 (three-tier: 64 MB SRAM + 64 GB HBM3 + 1.5 TB DDR5) |
| Memory bandwidth | 21,000,000 GB/s | — |
| FP16 (dense) | 62,500 TFLOPS | 638 TFLOPS |
| FP8 (dense) | — | 1,250 TFLOPS |
| Form factor | wafer-scale (single-wafer system) | PCIe (SN40L DataScale system) |
| Announced | 2024-03-13 | 2023-09-19 |
| Released | 2024-04-01 | 2024-01-01 |
Robots running Cerebras WSE-3 (Wafer-Scale Engine 3)
No robots publicly running it yet.
Robots running SambaNova SN40L
No robots publicly running it yet.
Data centers with Cerebras WSE-3 (Wafer-Scale Engine 3)
No data centers publicly running it yet.
Data centers with SambaNova SN40L
No data centers publicly running it yet.
Common questions
Cerebras WSE-3 (Wafer-Scale Engine 3) vs SambaNova SN40L: which is faster for training?
Cerebras WSE-3 (Wafer-Scale Engine 3) has 50.00x the dense FP16/BF16 throughput of the other (Cerebras WSE-3 (Wafer-Scale Engine 3): 62,500 TFLOPS; SambaNova SN40L: 1,250 TFLOPS). Real-world training speed also depends on memory bandwidth, interconnect, and software stack: see the spec diff for those inputs.
Cerebras WSE-3 (Wafer-Scale Engine 3) vs SambaNova SN40L: which has more memory?
SambaNova SN40L carries more HBM (Cerebras WSE-3 (Wafer-Scale Engine 3): 44 GB on-die SRAM; SambaNova SN40L: 1500 GB DDR5 (three-tier: 64 MB SRAM + 64 GB HBM3 + 1.5 TB DDR5)). Memory capacity sets the largest model that fits on one chip without partitioning; memory bandwidth sets inference throughput.
Cerebras WSE-3 (Wafer-Scale Engine 3) vs SambaNova SN40L: which is more power-efficient?
Dense FP16/BF16 TFLOPS per watt: Cerebras WSE-3 (Wafer-Scale Engine 3) 2.72 (62,500 ÷ 23000 W); SambaNova SN40L 1.79 (1,250 ÷ 700 W). Cerebras WSE-3 (Wafer-Scale Engine 3) wins at the die level; system-level efficiency also depends on cooling and interconnect.
See also: every chip comparison · Cerebras WSE-3 (Wafer-Scale Engine 3) full page · SambaNova SN40L full page.